QZ.com: Why our startup has no bosses, no office, and a four-day work week

We couldn’t understand
why people without technical knowledge had to tell programmers “what”
to do and, furthermore, they had to supervise “how” programmers did it.

This article
really resonated with me since I have frequently seen first hand how a
lack of conscientious programming can cost an organization in the long
run.Call me crazy but I have always taken the long view when coding since
much of my work in recent years has involved unravelling the "shortcuts"
and sloppy work of previous programmer/developers. Why do so many
programmers produce so much crappy code?

At big tech companies
we frequently observed how programmers would do bad work in a short period
of time and receive praise from their bosses. Over time, this leads to
the standard: “let’s program with low quality but as fast as possible.”

So, blame it on the managers! Indeed
after asserting that a developer needs at least a 4-hour stretch uninterrupted
to be most effective, one of my favorite observations in the article neatly
articulates the damage that even a "short meeting" can cause:

If for example, our boss assigns a meeting at 11am,
then the morning is lost since I have to get ready for the meeting, attend
the meeting, greet everybody, discuss the topics, then I have to go back
to my desk and pick up exactly from where I had left off, see what I was
doing and keep on programming. With all these activities, the whole morning
is practically lost.

As the article points out not all developer/programmers
are suited for a self-guided style of work, but I recently marked 3 years
working almost entirely from home and have to agree that if you can pull
it off, the benefits are tremendous, both in terms of quality of work and
lifestyle. I believe my choice of platform (Lotus Notes) is also particularly
well-suited to this style of work.

Disclaimer

This site is in no way affiliated, endorsed, sanctioned, supported, nor blessed by Lotus Software nor IBM Corporation, nor any of my past or future clients (although they are welcome to do so). The opinions, theories, facts, etc. presented here are my own and in no way represent any official pronouncement by me on behalf of any other entity.